


We're falling apart, and we're coming together, again and again

by Joudie



Category: Pitch (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-24
Updated: 2017-11-18
Packaged: 2018-12-06 10:10:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11598441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Joudie/pseuds/Joudie
Summary: Set approximately a year after Ginny's injury.





	1. Chapter 1

     In the dilapidated, overcrowded bar, Ginny sat with her rigid back to the dance floor. Contrary to her downing her 5th beer of the night, scratch that, her 6th, she had yet to surrender control in a public venue. She was engulfed in the heavy smell of booze and sweat, clinging to her brown skin, weighing her down. Her dull, dark brown eyes took in the bartender. Throughout the night, he’d been gradually contemplating her longer every time he glanced at her. She wondered if he knew who she was. She decided that she didn't care. Despite that fact, she knew he didn't recognize her yet. Recognition looks like this: an unmistakable, unmasked eagerness to be the one to break through her barriers. Recognition feels like this: clenched fists, beating heart in anticipation for distinct reactions.

     Tensing whenever anyone got close to her, she supposed, was a thing of the past. Early on in her career, that was never acceptable. Now she was adamant in her resolve to adjust this behaviour. But in her current state, she has a hard time keeping her attention on anything lately (especially figuring out if anyone had noticed her in this forsaken place).

     With a heavy-hearted sigh, she finally decided to end her night. She checked the time on her phone, purposefully avoiding looking at her lockscreen. 4:46 AM. Ginny briefly wondered how long she could keep going like this. Finally, she unlocked her phone and ordered an uber.

     As she waited for Umair, her uber driver, her phone lit up with a call. She hesitated, her thumb hovering over the answer button. She delayed answering for so long that the call dropped and her screen dimmed. She let out a burdensome breath. A text alerting her that her ride had arrived had startled her into motion. She trudged through the cramped bar undetected. Looking around outside and tugging her hoodie down in order to cover her lycra-clad legs, her phone lit up again with the same name. This time she sent it straight to voicemail. He didn’t leave one, not that she expected him to. Unsurprisingly, he called again when she got in the car. His tenacious and persistent nature, once a part of the reason she fell in love with him, now just another strike against him. Ginny glared at her phone until it stopped ringing. She proceeded to turn off her phone when it rang again. Agitated, she nearly pitched her phone out the car window (wouldn’t it be just her luck, though, if some random pedestrian found it and exposed whatever little privacy she had gained?) when she noticed the call was from a different number.

     Mike.

     Perhaps it was the alcohol coursing through her veins but however irritated, Ginny determined that he was the more appealing choice at the moment.

     Ginny picked up his call but didn’t say a word.

     “Why are you ignoring me?” Mike bantered. Hitting the nail on a different coffin.

     “I wasn’t ignoring you. I was tactfully avoiding you,” she replied impassively.

     He must have sensed something was up with her (he was always good at anticipating her moods, distance and time hadn’t dulled that at least), because he sounded more alert when he asked, “You okay, Baker?”

     She tried to keep the dejection out of her voice and instead a more hostile tone came out when she replied, “Just peachy, Captain.”

     “Not your Captain anymore, Rookie,” came the familiar response.

     She almost faltered. They hadn’t spoken to each other like this in weeks. Their easy banter was a thing of the past. A hazy but treasured and never forgotten thing of the past. This shouldn’t feel like before. Yet her voice softened remarkably when she quipped, “Not your Rookie anymore.”

     “So, where are you?” he inquired. He knew how stubborn Ginny was; there was no use in pushing her to reveal what was on her mind.

     Grimly she murmured, “On my way back to the hotel. Just walking in now actually.”

     “Okay,” he replied, somewhat mischievously.

     Suspiciously and a little peeved, she scolded, “What are you up to?”

     Mike hadn’t responded as the elevator arrived at the penthouse. She just about hung up on him when the elevator door opened and she ran directly into his hard chest.

     Playfully, he exclaimed, “Surprise!”

     Ginny had no patience for him (no matter how generous the years had been to him, and boy were they magnanimous. He had gotten rid of the Duck Dynasty look, opting for a shortly trimmed beard and his full head of hair had more salt than pepper since the last time she’d seen him) nonetheless, she pleaded to whichever God was listening to give her some self-control as she glowered at Mike. She tried to keep her features impassive, she truly did, but her words were loaded with meaning when she asked, “What are you doing here?”

     Mike shrugged but ambled out of her way to allow her to unlock her door. “How’d you even get in?” Ginny asked offhandedly.

     “Your doorman still remembers me. Not enough to let me into your apartment though,” he grumbled, slightly brooding.

     Ginny waltzed in, leaving the door open for Mike. She contemplated closing it before he had a chance to get through (that would serve the bastard right) but she had no energy for that.

     Immediately after stepping foot in her apartment, Ginny’s phone lit up again. Resigned, she told Mike to make himself at home then picked up the call.

     “Ginny,” the voice on the line instantly breathed.

     She closed her eyes, allowing herself a second to feel the scant comfort his voice used to bring, before she steeled herself and replied shortly, “Noah.”

 


	2. Chapter 2

     Although Ginny wanted nothing more than to feel the soft caress that his voice previously stimulated, she rather felt the hopelessness of her situation. Here she was; back at the Omni, pacing back and forth with a storm of words waiting to wreak havoc on her boyfriend but with no way of disclosing them. Frustration burned brightly through her, igniting her energy again. Despite her contempt, she waited for him to speak.

     “Is this going to be a reoccurrence?” Noah complained. She waited for him to speak again and sure enough, he continued, but considerably more gently, “What happened...” He faltered for a minute then said, “to us?”

     “Noah,” she whispered, wishing that she could properly unload all the weight and burdens of this relationship. Ginny tried to pinpoint the exact moment it transitioned from jovial into resentment and deception. She concluded that there were many small indications throughout, she should have paid more attention. “I just feel like… I don’t know, we just aren’t the same people anymore, I guess.”

     “Yeah, I know. I’m sorry.”

     Despite the fact that he couldn’t see her, Ginny shook her head, “I’m staying at the Omni. Tomorrow morning I’ll come by to pick up my stuff and--”

     “Ginny,” he interrupted. 

     “Listen, Noah. I can't keep on going like this. We can't keep going back to the same fight over and over again. I asked you to accept me for who I am but here you are, trying to sabotage my life.”

     “It isn't your life!” Noah snapped, uncharacteristically. Calmly, he mended, “it's just a career, Ginny. You can't let it take full control of your life.” He unknowingly echoed the words Al once told her when she was a rookie.

     She let his words hang for a moment before she replied, “I'll have a clubby swing by later to pick up my things.”

     Up until recently, Ginny had entirely blocked Mike from her mind (dealing with one disastrous relationship at a time). However, before she disconnected the call and turned her phone off, she noticed that he abandoned the concealed way he was eavesdropping and was simply and unabashedly staring at her.

     He opened his mouth to say something (probably a smartass comment she definitely was not in the mood for) when she beat him to it and asked, “Want a beer?”

     Mike mutely nodded, seeming to understand what she needed at the moment. When Ginny handed him one, he asked in concern, “Tough week?”

     “Tough year,” Ginny sighed as she settled on the other side of the couch. She shouldn’t consume anymore alcohol since she already had a few beers at the bar and had barely ate anything all day but… She was in her hotel and despite his actions in the past few weeks, Ginny trusted Mike.

     “What's going on with you and tech boy?”

     She stared at the neck of her bottle for a few seconds before she repeated, “What are you doing here, Mike?”

     “Jeez Baker, can't a retired captain check on his rookie every once in awhile?”

     “Hm,” she hummed, her tone noncommittal. Ginny turned on the TV and settled comfortably on the couch with her feet tucked under her. She didn’t bother changing the channel from the last time she watched TV, which was on the ESPN channel, currently highlighting reruns of the past season. They stayed silent as each was lost in their own thoughts for a few minutes.

     Almost to herself, Ginny broke the peace by disclosing monotonously, “He doesn’t understand…”  _ us _ , she wanted to say (which was absurd since there was never a ‘them’ to begin with, not since that night outside of Boardner’s at least), instead she finished with, “baseball.” Ginny stared fixedly on the TV. In spite of her opening up, it wasn't fair. Mike didn’t deserve to know what was going on in her life. For fuck’s sake he hadn’t been in contact with her as they used to be since before the Padres made the playoffs this year, and she didn’t owe him a thing. True, they loosely stayed in contact with each other, but it was a dramatic wake up call from him consuming every other minute of her life when she was his rookie. Regardless... she needed someone to talk to. With the Sanders on yet another family vacation and Livan on a vacation of some sort himself, she had no one to confide in. “Just last week,” she laughed bitterly at the memory, saying it aloud for the first time, “I found out that he’d been selling rumours to the tabloids about me retiring.” Ginny had been furious when she discovered what he was up to. She wanted to confront him about it, she wanted to shout, yell, threaten. But it was no use.

     Before Mike had a chance to voice his confusion, Ginny went on, “Not because he wanted the money. No. He wanted the seed to be planted that Ginny Baker is done ‘playing with the boys.’” She lifted her fingers, her right hand juggling the beer bottle to air quote, eyes still directed at the tv.

     When Mike didn’t reply (not that she expected him to), she continued bitterly, “Baseball eroded my life. It eroded my relationships. I’ve spent my whole life defining myself as a ballplayer and now life is passing me by.” She took a sip from her beer then mumbled, “But see... that's the thing. It’s so easy to say that baseball made me be less of who I am. Blame the game and all that,” she sneered, then in a flat and low voice said, “I should’ve listened to Al.”

     “Baker,” he mumbled when it sounded like she was done.

     “You staying over?” she seemed to snap out of her despondent and desolate mood, while she gathered the half-empty beer bottles.

     Dropping the matter in the meantime, Mike replied, “I was gonna see if there’s an empty room somewhere.”

     “Don’t be ridiculous,” she chided, her early resolve about being angry at his minimal contact completely out of her mind. Her transient forgiveness of his behaviour was chalked up to the alcohol which she was planning on dealing with another time. “You can stay here.”

     After depositing the bottles in the recycling bin, she trudged through the mess to get to her bedroom. Sensing the uncertainty and hesitation coming from Mike, Ginny said, “You can sleep on the bed, too, if you promise you're not gonna try anything.”

     Although her voice had a humorous quality to it, she deflated a little when Mike chuckled and promised her that he would be on his best behaviour. Yeah, she definitely thought too highly of herself.

     Her addled brain seemed keen on examining all the disturbing realities of finally being just one of the guys and what it meant in terms of her relationships. She should have just became a nun like her mother wanted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was in a _mood_ when I wrote this and tbh I don't know when the next time I'll update this fic. Thank you for your time!


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